


Refrain

by vass



Category: Sarah Caudwell - Hilary Tamar mysteries
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-02
Updated: 2008-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hilary, perhaps not with the very noblest of motives, takes Ragwort out to dinner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refrain

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Nestra in the Yuletide 2005 Challenge

The prudent strategist studies every possible move on the board before determining which move to make. Such examinations, however, prove practicable only for a finite number of pieces; a condition mercifully common to all known chessboards. In a social milieu, however, unless one's range of choices is quite small it may be necessary to select a conquest without examining all the options in advance. 62 New Square constitutes such a conveniently small circle, and one may therefore idly consider its junior members' personal possibilities without fear that contemplation would forestall action.

What follows are the fruits of such contemplation, in a period in which my labours weighed heavily upon me and I found that I could not again devote myself to my task without some change of climate, some certain refreshment. The responsibilities of the Scholar are many: if the advancement of knowledge, in this case the completion of my _Causa in the Early Common Law_, should require from me some amatory diversion, well, the sacrifice must be made.

Julia Larwood and Selina Jardine are graceful and charming in every way; Julia is romantic, and artistically dishevelled, and Selena has a delightful nose and a voice of unusual persuasive beauty; but Julia's romantic nature and Selina's persuasive arts are at present devoted exclusively to the pursuit of men younger than themselves.

My former pupil Timothy Shepherd is entirely personable, but Timothy on a previous occasion made it clear to one that his reverent esteem for a former professor would make any more intimate relationship impossible. One might argue in vain that, than the pure and ardent teaching partnership the Greeks named _erastes_ and _eromenos_ there can be no greater intimacy; but what scholar could fail to be moved, indeed, flattered, by such a delicate and respectful appeal to that sacred vocation, so rarely given its due honour?

Michael Cantrip is thin, pale, and possessed of demented black hair and eyes like burning coals; but Cantrip is of a determinedly frivolous disposition, as previous endeavours have shown. Besides, he read his law at Cambridge, so his speech patterns are all but incomprehensible. No, it will not do.

So that leaves Ragwort. Desmond Ragwort is slender, elegant, and furnished with impeccable taste and with an almost visible aegis of personal probity that has on more than one occasion led passers-by to mistake him, even in his gown and wig, for a young curate.

Having reached this satisfactory point in my deliberations, I made an appointment to dine with him at six on Thursday at Gabriel's, a restaurant slightly removed from the usual haunts of the Nursery's inhabitants, but excellent in its food and modest in its requirements.

We discussed Julia first of all, over sherry. Matters had progressed between them, albeit not very far, since I had last had the pleasure of their company. Knowing Julia as I do, I feared no ethical qualm; she is the least possessive of women. Moreover, I saw in the topic at hand an opportunity to benefit three people at once.

I enquired as to his hopes and aspirations in this direction; he allowed that they were honourable. This disposed of the soup course as well. "Do you intend marriage, then?"  
"Certainly not, Hilary." Indeed, I had not seriously entertained the idea. Allowing sentimental considerations to enter into a financial and legal alliance of such complexity was unthinkable to both of them. I had, in asking the question, wished to ascertain in what specific quarter his intentions, and indeed his high principles, lay.

At that point I thought fit to pursue my own interest in the matter. I made a delicate suggestion.  
"No, Hilary." He pursed his lips. The same casual observers who had mistaken Ragwort for a curate can not have observed the expressive range of his mouth... but I digress.

The roast duck and its accompanying dishes cause another welcome break in the conversation.

"You are unfailingly virtuous, but is it not the case that one must draw a line between virtue and prudery. Do you yourself, Ragwort, know where exactly where that line is to be drawn?"  
He looked back at me calmly. "No, Hilary." He seemed surprisingly tranquil at this lack of moral certainty. I decided to let this point sink in, and changed my tack.

I asked "Would you want to go to Julia inexperienced?" just as a waiter came to clear away the dishes, and before I had fairly decided if I was advancing Julia's cause or my own - not, I hasten to remark, that the two are incompatible in any way. The interruption perturbed me a little, and a silence fell.

After the same waiter returned and left us in the company of a mint sorbet, I found Ragwort smiling at me, and raising one eyebrow. "It won't do, Hilary, come on. Julia, as you well know, relishes a savour of innocence in her partners, and is hardly -" his lips thinned fastidiously "- without experience herself."  
I saw here some hope for my own cause, and swallowed a mouthful of sorbet quite rapidly, but before I could open my mouth again, Ragwort was shaking his head, "No, Hilary."

Over raspberries and a sweet dessert wine, I pressed my point on Julia's behalf at least, since my own cause seemed moot. "My dear Ragwort, you are the soul of artistic symmetry. Is it not the case in the works of the dramatist Shakespeare, as Julia herself would style him, that after initial demurral and subsequent persuasion the beloved object must inevitably yield? Wouldn't you find it artistically indecorous not eventually to yield to Julia?" It has been some time since I have had occasion to study any text not related to causa; I may be wrong about Julia's dramatist. Ragwort seemed to think this not unlikely. "No, Hilary."

I escorted him to his doorstep, thinking wistfully of his breakfast omelettes. "I suppose I'll leave you here, then," I said. Whereupon suffice it to say that the dear creature put his hand on my sleeve and uttered the same phrase...


End file.
